


Older Brothers

by BC_Brynn



Series: Trust Your Nose [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: BAMF Uchiha Itachi, Big Brother!Iruka, Big Brother!Itachi, Families of Choice, Family, Gen, Hokage no Kage, Iruka on the Warpath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 03:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13157868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BC_Brynn/pseuds/BC_Brynn
Summary: In the wake of the Kyuubi’s rampage, everyone in Konoha has a story. This one will never be told, but there are other ways of sharing such things.Or: How Iruka met Itachi and they both walked away from the encounter unscathed.





	Older Brothers

**Author's Note:**

> Can you tell I adore Iruka? ‘cause I do. Even though he ate my brain. And I also have a special place in my heart for Itachi, so this is largely self-indulgent.
> 
> I moved the timeline of Itachi’s visit to Konoha because otherwise it would have fallen between Old Dog’s Tricks and Cave Canem – and it didn’t make sense there, so. Now it happens during chapter seven of Cave Canem.
> 
> (I know this isn’t how things went in canon. I blame… the butterfly effect.)
> 
> Here it is. The second bonus one-shot. There will be more.
> 
> (detailed warnings are in the end note)

Iruka wasn’t even supposed to be here. He was off duty tonight, after he had returned from a mission and pulled three near-continuous days at the Hokage Tower (while Tsunade-sama holed up in T&I), and Yoshino-san took him aside to discreetly alert him to the fact that he was answering questions no one had asked.

Which wasn’t exactly correct, but Iruka kept the true acuity of his hearing secret for a reason, and his inability to discern whether someone spoke by his side or in a different room wasn’t far off from auditory hallucinations as causes for concern came.

Iruka had gone home. He recalled vague notions of taking a shower, but he hadn’t gotten past the hall; he had simply face-planted into their sofa and remained there in blithe unconsciousness until the alert woke him up.

“ _Don’t the Akatsuki wear something like that?_!”

Iruka blinked into the late morning light. There was little context for the question, but he tracked the path of the messenger – Aoba? – up the street and a little past the square. There he lost it.

Still, Akatsuki was as bad as it got, short of Kyuubi itself. Iruka was on his feet and out the door before he fully realised what was going on. Instinct pulled him toward the Hokage Tower, but within seconds he realised what a thoughtless reaction that was.

The Hokage was safe enough with his entourage of ANBU. No, if they were dealing with Akatsuki, he was needed elsewhere. He set out for Training Field Twenty-Seven. As he ran over the rooftops, jumped, ran, jumped and jumped again, catching snatches of conversations and trying to make sense of the emergency, he tried to suppress the surge of terror.

 _Akatsuki_. Their existence was still mostly a secret from the public, but Iruka had spent the past month hip-deep in Hokage administration, and he knew more than he had ever wanted to. Akatsuki were a huge threat – there was ideology and dogma and questionable recruitment efforts – but what little Konoha knew of their intentions for sure was that they were after the jinchuuriki.

Naruto, Iruka thought.

And then: if anything happens to him, I’ll…

He couldn’t finish the thought, and while he vainly cast about for a reasonable and yet believable version of that future himself, his feet ate ground. He blazed through the training fields and across the river, and-

A man stood in the centre of a clearing.

Iruka braked, leaving behind him a scar of dug up earth across the meadow. He remained crouched, leaning on his right knee and looking up at the inert person wearing a broad hat and a long black cloak decorated with red clouds. They cut a cartoonish figure, but Iruka wasn’t as foolish as to mistake ridiculousness for lack of danger.

“Umino Iruka,” said the person in a deep, man’s voice. They – _he_ – looked up. “Chuunin – and yet somehow the Acting Hokage’s aide.”

It took Iruka one look at the face to unmistakably recognise his opponent. “Uchiha Itachi. An S-class nukenin.” Who had his own file in Sandaime-sama’s personal archives; now Iruka regretted that he hadn’t had the temerity to read its full contents rather than the brief summary.

“You will die if you stand against me,” Itachi warned him, losing none of his terror-inducing equanimity.

Iruka couldn’t argue with the man’s absolute certainty of his victory; there was a reason why Iruka never rose above chuunin rank and, much as he admired and respected his partner, he doubted even _Sharingan no Kakashi_ could fight this shinobi and walk away from it – much less walk away victorious.

Iruka did not have ambitions of winning. He had a tiny hope of surviving, as Itachi was well known for ignoring enemies he did not consider challenging enough rather than indulging in wholesale slaughter. Granted, after the wholesale slaughter that had raised him to legendary status, he had no use for such empty shows of violence (and, obviously, he did not find joy in murder for the sake of murder).

Iruka raised his stance ever so slightly, trying to suppress a shiver. He vividly remembered meeting Itachi when Iruka was fourteen years old. Though younger than him, Itachi had seemed larger than life – not just by reputation, but due to his inimitable experimental _inverted_ KI.

“As you wish, then,” Itachi spoke softly, and his bottomless black eyes melted into the dreaded _Kaleidoscope Wheel_.

x

The dreamscape was exactly what Iruka would have expected of a morbid, murder-happy crow summoner. It surprised him, because he _knew_ there was far more to Itachi than this.

An abandoned field of war, ragged crosses sticking out toward the sky, and Iruka bound to one of them? Did this scene appear horrific to anyone? Was there some sort of base instinct it was supposed to be triggering?

Iruka couldn’t tell. To him it seemed merely disappointingly uninspired.

What actually terrified him was the thought of Naruto. Akatsuki shinobi went around in pairs. Iruka would not significantly slow Itachi down, and there was another enemy somewhere around.

Kakashi will protect him, Iruka thought.

The belief fell apart like a dandelion flower, pieces flying every which way. What remained behind was the bald, naked stalk. Iruka abandoned; Iruka unmoored; Iruka afloat.

“Hatake Kakashi?” inquired Itachi. “The doujutsu thief?”

“The eye was a gift!” Iruka snarled from the cross, pulling on the bindings. He knew the story behind the transplant, if only in broad strokes, and he knew what Obito’s eye meant to Kakashi. Accusations of theft from the Uchiha were frequent and wrathful – and entirely unfounded.

“ _Hatake-san_ …” Itachi mused idly, standing in front of the cross on the black-soiled dream-plane, casually shifting his weight to one leg, so his hip stuck out. He seemed fascinated with his own fingernails. “The Acting Hokage. He is still breathing; that does him credit.”

Iruka screamed, pulling on the manacles hard enough to fracture and dislocate both wrists.

“Temper,” Itachi spoke absently. His forehead scrunched slightly. “ _Temper_? Oh, right. Mother used to say that. To Sasuke.”

All of sudden, he became animated. The change of expression wasn’t a large one, but all the more pronounced. Life seemed to pour back into his eyes as he looked up and faced Iruka who – for hanging off of a cross by a couple of dislocated wrists – was in suspiciously little pain.

“You taught Sasuke, _sensei_. Is he very strong yet?”

Iruka bit the inside of his cheek and sneered as best as he could, while most of his brain was trying to deal with the momentary bemusement. Where was the advertised psychopathy? Where was the heedless cruelty promised by the bingo book?

What he was watching here resembled Kakashi’s idiosyncrasy more than anything else.

Itachi tilted his head to the side. He surveyed the black crosses sticking out from the ground all around him, and dissolved them with a wave of his hand. What remained was a bare battlefield, scarred and blood-soaked, surrounded by hills void of any noticeable plant life. A deathly desert.

“You are aware that I could torture you for the subjective duration of seventy-two hours before the first of your allies arrives to help you?” Itachi inquired idly.

Iruka didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

Itachi stared.

Iruka did his level best to ignore him.

Itachi nodded. “Good, good. Sasuke is progressing well-”

“I won’t let you touch him!” Iruka snapped.

Itachi nodded at him with entirely unwarranted self-satisfaction. Perhaps he thought this was droll? “Explanation, then…”

A crow swooped down from the crimson sky; Itachi snatched it in midair, stepped closer to Iruka – and forced the whole bird into Iruka’s mouth. The sharp feathers cut the insides of his throat; he gagged; he couldn’t breathe-

Something slammed into Iruka’s brain with all the force of a battle mallet. He lost all sensation of his body, and then of his vision-body. His throat did not sear him anymore. His wrists were not longer there; there were other wrists – spindly ones, with a cyan vein snaking between his tendons because he was as translucent-skinned as the rest of his family. An old clan. Honourable.

His wrists ached from training, but he ignored the discomfort. He was six – old enough to take care of himself. Old enough to take care of his brother.

He snagged a spare kunai as he sprinted past the training posts in the yard. His sandals clomped on the porch. He skidded on the rug inside the hall. He scraped off a sliver of skin from his palm righting himself against the wall and ran, on and on, winding through the familiar corridors.

He ripped the paper wall where he failed to brake exactly enough, but he would take his punishment gladly, if only his little brother was well by the end of this night. He felt the licks of the inhuman, monstrous killing intent behind his back, and knew he couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down.

His whole world shrunk to his mission.

“Itachi-kun-”

“I have him,” he wheezed at one of his distant aunts – he didn’t care to determine which one. He leaned over the crib. The baby was there, pink-faced, crying his eyes out.

He was not screaming. Not yet four months old, and already a proud shinobi.

“Brave little brother,” praised the breathless nightmare-Iruka, before he stood on his toes, bent down over the edge of the crib, tapped the little forehead with two fingers, and scooped the distraught baby up into his arms, ignoring his aching wrists.

Pain did not matter. Exhaustion did not matter.

All that mattered was _Sasuke_.

“Mother is in charge of the evacuation,” dream-Iruka shortly informed the aunt, and then he ran again, through the corridors and out the other side of the District, where someone – Mother? – had already blasted a hole through the fence.

Dream-Iruka joined the fleeing crowd, weaving and leaping and shoving with chakra-reinforced elbows to keep them from being trampled. Up the street and across the square, up another street and then through the gates – abandon the village! to the shelters! – there was pain and death and killing intent behind them, the colossus of a demon rising into the night sky, nine tails slashing, and dream-Iruka would run until his lungs burnt out before he let that creature touch his little brother-

In that moment Iruka felt – and understood – Itachi’s absolute, insane devotion to Sasuke. Nothing would ever harm Sasuke, as long as Itachi lived-

( _What does constitute harm in his books_? wondered Iruka’s autonomous mind. _Surely the catastrophic trauma Sasuke experienced due to his family’s slaughter counted as damaging_?)

-and Itachi was willing to go to extreme, nigh on cataclysmic lengths to ensure that he would live as long as Sasuke needed him to. Sasuke was the linchpin of the world, of the very _universe_ ; Sasuke was the centre of gravity; Sasuke was the reason and the explanation and the point of everything. In a way, reality through Itachi’s eyes was simple and made perfect sense.

Oh, the man was smart enough and rational enough to be aware of how far gone he was, but he had chosen this path for himself and was – if not happy, then satisfied with his lot.

Iruka could admire that. He had not experienced anything nearly so damaging that he would have had to give himself over to a deliberate delusion to keep from breaking completely, but he felt similarly enough.

If Itachi chose to attack Naruto, Iruka would die standing in his way.

The scene of the Kyuubi’s rampage and the unending run through the evacuating crowd dispersed into the familiar abandoned battlefield. Iruka was no longer hanging from a cross. His wrists ached with a phantom pain, but they definitely had not been recently dislocated.

Itachi-san, standing at a moderate, polite distance, smiled. Well, one corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly, and hints of crows’ feet appeared around his eyes – but surely that counted?

“You see, Umino-san?”

Iruka nodded. And bowed, very slightly, but with honest deference to a superior ninja. “I do, Itachi-san. What is it you would ask of me?”

Because that was the point of this exchange – Itachi-san implied that they need not be enemies. Their respective goals were not mutually exclusive, and apparently there was something Iruka could do for this ridiculously powerful shinobi.

Itachi-san narrowed his eyes. “Has Sarutobi-sama mentioned his Shadow?”

Iruka briefly froze in shock as several puzzle pieces fell into place. _Hokage no Kage_ – the shadow Hokage, the ninja behind the curtain, the secret other half of the team-up forever hidden from sight. Sandaime-sama had implied that there was such a man, and that he had become twisted by the power to the point that he constituted a threat.

And if he was a threat so great that Sarutobi-sama suspected him of engineering the Kyuubi attack, would it not follow that he might have been the true instigator of the Uchiha massacre as well?

If this mysterious shinobi somehow figured out Sasuke’s importance to Itachi-san…?

Iruka shuddered, feeling echoes of the terror Itachi had let him experience in the vision. Sasuke was a sure-fire handle on Itachi-san. And – oh kami! – with Namikaze-sama dead, the next name mentioned in conjunction with the Hokageship was _Uchiha Itachi_. Did _all_ the strings of _every_ disaster to affect Konoha within the past several _decades_ lead to this as-of-yet nameless man?

“You want me to get Sasuke out of Konoha,” Iruka guessed, although he did not truly doubt that he was right.

Itachi-san watched him for a few seconds and then nodded, ever so slightly. “You are often underestimated, Umino-san, are you not.”

Iruka shrugged. On occasion he was underestimated, and he preferred it that way. The people who mattered knew to value him for his abilities, and the rest were of no consequence.

With glaring exceptions.

“Give me a name, Itachi-san,” Iruka pleaded. “I can’t – there are too many possibilities.” He walked down the street and read every face, took notice of every mask. There were too many that he could identify plus some more, so skilled at surveillance that he wouldn’t even have been able tell they were there if not for the rustle of their clothes and the creaks of the soles of their shoes.

Just being aware of a threat did nothing but exhaust Iruka.

Itachi-san hung his head. He reflected for a while.

And then, once the _Mangekyou_ -world lightened and the promise of dawn glowed soft pink over the black horizon, Itachi-san carded one black-nailed hand through the trailing strands of his black hair and trained his black-and-red eyes at Iruka.

“Watch, _sensei_. Watch and learn.”

And he showed Iruka the day before the Uchiha massacre, noon to midnight, as Itachi-san himself had lived it.

x

Iruka woke up slumped against the trunk of a tree in Training Ground Fifteen. It wasn’t where he had lost consciousness, but Itachi-san had been considerate in his choice of the spot to leave Iruka in, as Iruka had remained out of sight of casual passers-by and rested comfortably enough.

It was barely fifteen minutes since he had left his apartment; he could still hear distant noises of the alert and the hunt being organised (as if anyone in this village had the slightest hope of catching Itachi-san if he didn’t want to be caught).

Iruka dragged himself up to his feet, palm sliding against the rough edges of the bark, and staggered straight back home, hoping that no one had noticed him and he could just go back to sleep without anyone ever finding out about his death-defying adventure.

Now he knew who to watch out for.

There were no squeaks of soles anywhere nearby; no rustles of clothes; no gazes burning into his back. He did not doubt that Itachi-san had killed whoever Iruka’s designated watcher for the day had been – and good riddance.

Root, Iruka thought warily. Root, and at the centre of it the Shadow of the Third Fire Shadow: the _Sandaime Hokage no Kage_.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: unreliable narrator, canon-typical violence, trauma, mental health issues, mentions of murder and genocide, politics, Danzo


End file.
